tr(1) General Commands Manual tr(1)
NAME
tr - Translates characters
SYNOPSIS
tr [-Acs] string1 string2
tr -ds [-Ac] string1 string2
tr -d [-Ac] string1
tr -s [-Ac] string1
The tr command copies characters from the standard input to the standard output with substitution or deletion of selected characters.
STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows:
tr: XCU5.0
Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags.
OPTIONS
[Tru64 UNIX] Translates on a byte-by-byte basis. When you specify this option, tr does not support extended characters. Complements
(inverts) the set of characters in string1, which is the set of all characters in the current character set, as defined by the current set-
ting of LC_CTYPE, except for those actually specified in the string1 argument. These characters are placed in the array in ascending colla-
tion sequence, as defined by the current setting of LC_COLLATE. Deletes all occurrences of input characters or collating elements found in
the array specified in string1. Replaces any character specified in string1 that occurs as a string of two or more repeating characters as
a single instance of the character in string2.
OPERANDS
Translation control strings as explained in the DESCRIPTION section.
DESCRIPTION
Input characters from string1 are replaced with the corresponding characters in string2. The tr command cannot handle an ASCII NUL ( 00)
in string1 or string2; it always deletes NUL from the input.
[Tru64 UNIX] The trbsd command is a BSD compatible version of tr.
The following constructs can be used to specify characters or single-character collating elements. If any of these constructs result in
multicharacter collating elements, tr excludes those elements from the resulting array without issuing a diagnostic. Represents itself
when not described by one of the other conventions in this list. Represents a character by using its octal value. An octal sequence con-
sists of a backslash followed by the longest sequence of one-, two-, or three-octal-digit characters(01234567). The sequence causes the
character whose encoding is represented by the one-, two-, or three-digit octal value to be placed in the string. Represent standard back-
slash-escape sequences. No results are defined by the Single UNIX Specification for specifying characters after a backslash other than the
ones listed here. In portable applications, a backslash should be followed only by an octal sequence, another backslash, or the lowercase
letter a, b, f, n, r, t, or v.
[Tru64 UNIX] On UNIX systems, you can enclose string operands in quotation marks or specify a backslash before some characters,
such as * (an asterisk), to remove the special meaning of those characters to the shell. Represents a range of collating elements
between the specified range endpoints, inclusive, as defined by the current locale setting of the LC_COLLATE category. The starting
element, c1, must precede the ending element, c2, in the current collation order. The characters or collating elements in the range
are placed in the associated string in ascending collation sequence. Note that the collation sequence for ASCII characters, such as
letters in the English alphabet, may vary among locales. In the POSIX locale, for example, a-z produces a string with all English
lowercase letters in English alphabetical order. However, when LC_COLLATE is set to a different locale, English lowercase letters
may be subject to a different collation order. Therefore, a-z may produce a different result for locales other than the POSIX
locale. Stands for number repetitions of the character c. The number is considered to be in decimal unless the first digit of num-
ber is 0; then it is considered to be in octal. This format is valid only as string2. Represents all characters or collating ele-
ments belonging to the equivalence class specified by equiv, as defined by the LC_COLLATE locale category. An equivalence class
expression can be used for string1 or string2 only when used in combination with the -d and -s options. (For more information, see
the locale(4) reference page.) Represents all characters belonging to the defined character class, as defined by the current set-
ting of the LC_CTYPE locale category. The following character class names are accepted when specified in string1:
alnum cntrl lower space alpha digit print upper blank graph punct xdigit
If the current locale defines additional keywords (by including additional charclass definitions in the LC_TYPE category), the tr
command also recognizes those keywords as class values.
When the -d and -s options are specified together, any of the character class names are accepted in string2; otherwise, only charac-
ter class names lower or upper are accepted in string2 and then only if the class complement, (upper or lower, respectively) is
specified in the same relative position in string1. Such a specification is interpreted as a request for case conversion.
When [:lower:] appears in string1 and [:upper:] appears in string2, the arrays contain the characters from the toupper mapping in
the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale. When [:upper:] appears in string1 and [:lower:] appears in string2, the arrays contain
the characters from the tolower mapping in the LC_CTYPE category of the current locale.
The first character from each mapping pair is in the array for string1 and the second character from each mapping pair is in the
array for string2 in the same relative position.
[Tru64 UNIX] When string2 is shorter than string1, a difference results between historical System V and BSD systems. A BSD system pads
string2 with the last character found in string2. Thus, it is possible to do the following: tr 0123456789 d
[Tru64 UNIX] The preceding command translates all digits to the letter d. A portable application cannot rely on the BSD behavior; it
would have to code the example in the following way: tr 0123456789 '[d*]'
[Tru64 UNIX] If a given character appears more than once in string1, the character in string2 corresponding to its last appearance in
string1 will be used in the translation.
If the -c and -d options are both specified, all characters except those specified by string1 are deleted. The contents of string2 are
ignored, unless -s is also specified. Note, however, that the same string cannot be used for both the -d and the -s options; when both
options are specified, both string1 (used for deletion) and string2 (used for squeezing) are required.
If the -d option is not specified, each input character or collating element found in the array specified by string1 is replaced by the
character or collating element in the same relative position in the array specified by string2.
When the -s option is specified, if the string2 contains a character class, the argument's array contains all of the characters in that
character class. For example: tr -s '[:space:]'
In a case conversion, however, the string2 array contains only those characters defined as the second characters in each of the toupper or
tolower character pairs, as appropriate. For example: tr -s '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
System V Compatibility
[Tru64 UNIX] The root of the directory tree that contains the commands modified for SVID 2 compliance is specified in the file
/etc/svid2_path. You can use /etc/svid2_profile as the basis for, or to include in, your /etc/svid2_profile reads /etc/svid2_path and sets
the first entries in the PATH environment variable so that the modified SVID 2 commands are found first.
[Tru64 UNIX] In the SVID 2 compliant version of the tr command, only characters in the octal range of 1 to 377 are complemented when you
specify the -c option. This behavior is accomplished because the -A option is implicitly forced to be on when you specify the -c option.
NOTES
[Tru64 UNIX] Specifying the -A option improves ASCII performance. Despite similarities in appearance, the string arguments used by tr are
not regular expressions. The tr command correctly processes NULL characters in its input stream. NULL characters can be stripped using
the following command: tr -d ' 00' If string1 or string2 is the empty string, results are undefined and unpredictable.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: Successful completion. An error occurred.
EXAMPLES
To translate braces into parentheses, enter: tr '{}' '()' <textfile >newfile
This translates each { (left brace) to ( (left parenthesis) and each } (right brace) to ) (right parenthesis). All other characters
remain unchanged. In the POSIX locale, to translate lowercase ASCII characters to uppercase, you can enter: tr 'a-z' 'A-Z'
<textfile >newfile
This command assumes that English letters are collated in English alphabetical order, which may not be true for locales other than
the POSIX locale. The following command is recommended for case conversion for all locales: tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' <textfile
>newfile The two strings can be of different lengths: tr '0-9' '#' <textfile >newfile
This translates each 0 into a # (number sign) but does not treat the digits 1 to 9; if the two character strings are not the same
length, the extra characters in the longer one are ignored. To translate each digit to a # (number sign), enter:
tr '0-9' '[#*]' <textfile >newfile
The * (asterisk) tells tr to repeat the # (number sign) enough times to make the second string as long as the first one. To trans-
late each string of digits to a single # (number sign), enter: tr -s '0-9' '[#*]' <textfile >newfile In the POSIX locale, to trans-
late all ASCII characters that are not specified, enter: tr -c '[ -~]' '[A-_]' <textfile >newfile
This translates each nonprinting ASCII character to the next following corresponding control key letter ( 01 translates to B, 02
to C, and so on). ASCII DEL (177), the character that follows ~ (tilde), translates to a ] (right bracket). This command assumes
that ASCII characters are collated in a certain order, which may not be true for locales other than the POSIX locale. To create a
list of all words in file1 one per line in file2, where a word is taken to be a maximal string of letters, enter: tr -cs '[:alpha:]'
'[
*]' < file1 > file2 To use an equivalence class to identify accented variants of the base character e in file1, which are
stripped of diacritical marks and written to file2, enter: tr '[=e=]' '[e*]' < file1 > file2
Equivalence classes are locale dependent. Some locales may not include equivalence classes to associate base letters and their
accented variants.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the execution of tr: Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are
unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization vari-
ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value,
overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables. Determines the locale for the behavior of range expressions and
equivalence classes. Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-
byte as opposed to multibyte characters in arguments) and the behavior of character classes. Determines the locale for the format and con-
tents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
SEE ALSO
Commands: ed(1), ksh(1), sed(1), Bourne shell sh(1b), POSIX shell sh(1p), trbsd(1)
Files: ascii(5)
Standards: standards(5)
tr(1)